Abstract:

Cultural and linguistic immersion in study abroad programs often ends up being limited to physical exposure to the culture and language. After evaluating our program through an action research process, we decided that linguistic and cultural immersion and learning should go together both inside and outside the classrooms. That meant changing the approach our instructors and professors used in their classes and the design and contents of extracurricular activities. This important change in our didactic approach as staff and faculty involved a radical change in the students’ role in their own learning process. The student was made into protagonist of his/her own learning process, not a passive witness to linguistic or cultural experiences.

To support this, we adapted the CEFRL (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) proficiency scales to evaluate the student’s linguistic skills. Each student assesses his/her own skills using the same scales and rubrics as the instructors. Once the student and instructors are aware of the student’s main cultural and linguistic needs we design a structure of support classes and individual mentoring that can best help the student achieve his/her goals. One of the effective tools for this is the use of a learning commitment in which the student states his/her goals as a language and culture learner and his commitment to achieving them.

Our challenge was to turn the CEFRL standards into a teaching tool in helping our students improve their five linguistic skills. Our framework also helps our instructors facilitate the students’ linguistic and cultural learning in an orderly, stepwise manner. The success and effectiveness of our adaptation of the CEFRL for linguistic goals encouraged us to begin the creation of a similar Common Framework for Intercultural Learning, which will be explained by Professor Greenwood in another presentation at this conference.

In doing this, we adapted a reduced version of the CEFRL suited to the advanced Spanish levels our students begin with. We will explain the strategies and contents of the support classes and provide some examples of the tools we used. We close by providing data on the kinds of improvements we have gained through the application of this approach.

The contents of this presentation are complemented by the papers given by Davydd Greenwood, “Enhancing Intercultural Learning through Active Pedagogy, Program Integration, and Individualized Student Mentoring: The Casa-Seville Program” and Eva Infante “Increasing Intercultural Learning in Study Abroad through Active Pedagogy: The Consortium for Advanced Studies Abroad (CASA)-Seville Pilot Program”.

Keywords:

Linguistic progress, skills, intercultural, CEFRL.